Review by Frank Plowright

X-Men’s 2013 reboot stuttered to an end with yet another change of creative team, G. Willow Wilson and Ronald Boschi bringing the spotlight on an all-female X-Men line-up to a close.

There’s a nice start with Gambit on site and being sleazy at a festival when a massive sinkhole opens in the Utah desert, accompanied by extremely thundery weather. A call to the X-Men results in Monet, Psylocke, Storm and Rachel Summers turning up, and initially adding to the problem, leaving Storm trapped beneath the ground. That’s an issue because for all her strengths and imposing personality, Storm suffers from extreme claustrophobia, and being trapped underground is as bad as it gets for her.

Wilson rotates the narrative voice between the four lead characters, each taking a chapter, so offering greater insight into their personalities. Their predicament is contrasted with Beast and Jubilee back at the X-Men’s HQ attempting to figure out what’s responsible for changes to the planet. The result is sterile. The X-Men beneath the ground come up against a parade of generic monsters, and Boschi isn’t at all inspired by the plot, so turns in pages that tell the story, but very basically. Yes the underground location enables him to skimp on backgrounds, but he does so everywhere else also, and his jagged people have little appeal. As he goes through the motions, Wilson has the X-Men talking to themselves, having illusions and flashbacks when unconscious, and never really convinces as to the personalities. There are also way too many hugs.

Very little resonates, which is a shame, as the eventual revelation as to the truth is clever and ties in with the X-Men’s sphere of interest. However, despite a literal big bang in the final pages, this series ends with a whimper.